Wonder or Wander

"La vie et la mort se fondent ensemble et il n’y a pas d’évolution ni de destination, il n’y a que ETRE.” -- Albert Einstein

Last night I went to the Opera night at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. Unexpectedly I heard wonderful violin music there. Although I heard about her story before, I wasn't able to remember her name. She was the violin player who was seriously injured in a train accident. She played so wonderfully Carmen Fantasy, Op.25, by Sarasate as to make me cry. Extremely controlling every single note, she compelled me, if not all in the concert hall. It was beautiful and powerful.

This is going to be my last blog entry for this course. It seems that we jump over a variety of topics for three months in a congested classroom. The media literacy in this class has been like cultural studies. In this criticism about media-saturated society, Denzin says we inhibit a secondhand world that is mediated by cinema, television and calls it ‘cinematic society’. He continues to say that we have no direct access to the world, thus experiencing only its representations. It sounds very postmodern. Fragmented experiences with media constitute a reality in a sense that we make a sense out of the experiences. These experiences may not be congruent with one another and elicit our reflection in fluidity. If so, it is safe to say that media literacy takes another form of cultural studies. Along with this course, I also taught two lab sessions of an undergraduate course. Teaching this course based on a Do-It-Yourself ethic was very enjoyable and rewarding. In particular, this is my fir...

Recently my head spins around how we learn when members of a community participate and collaborate to produce a collective media project. I attempt to break down into two fundamental different modes of knowledge production. First a new level of knowledge can be obtained by juxtaposing individual knowledge or experience with one another or putting them altogether. A video made by community members in New Orleans is a good example. A member in the video shows a big list where all the people in the city were murdered are written since January 2007. The list itself is a kind of collaborative media project that brings dispersed experience/knowledge together and the video disseminates the collective knowledge created through the list-making project. This is a powerful process of collective knowledge production. The second mode I intend to formulate takes the opposite direction in a sense. In this mode, new knowledge can be produced by turning the familiar into the unfamiliar. In other words,...

Directed by Richard LaGravenese (2007) It is based on a true story, but why do I feel it is more fiction-like than Entre les murs, which is based on a fiction novel. I think, first of all, it is because the screenplay follows a Hollywood convention with successive pauses for catharsis effect, which made me so emotional each time. This is a common device utilized in feel-so-good movies. In addition, the teacher in the movie never gives up her belief and succeeds in all her attempts. This factor provides the movie with a strong backbone that extends to the end of the movie. The teacher is a heroine evidently. Yes, it is true that the story itself is extremely compelling and what she did is highly remarkable in the real life. But in comparison to The Class (Entre les murs, 2008), I ask why remarkable stories are predominantly made in this movie industry. I think this is the basic mechanism in which Hollywood movies, in particular, is made. It fabricates reviewers’ dreams of wishing to se...

This afternoon I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibition, Imagine, that was prepared to celebrate the 40th John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous Bed-in in Montreal in 1969. They did this performance during their honeymoon. Expecting intensive media attention, they wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to promote world peace, so they began this Bed-in performance in Amsterdam for a week. Then, they planned to go to New York, but Lennon’s entry was denied because of his drug conviction record, so flew to Bahamas. After spending one night in the heat, they flew again to Montreal. So, it seems that they happened to have the second Bed-in performance in Montreal by chance. It appeared that they received sufficient media attention. I wonder whether the media was disappointed that they were wearing pajamas all the time in their bed. This performance, in particular, was done after their sensational nude album jacket was released and Ono’s groundbreaking conceptual art had draw...

I saw her for the first time in the film Dancer in the Dark in 2000. Although I haven't seen her anywhere except some photos since then, her image imprinted in the movie was strong enough for me to remember her until today. This musical drama, which is gloomy unlike other musical movies, deals with a poor immigrant who is half blind and keeps her love for music until the last second of her life in prison. There is a story--sad one--but it is relatively forgetful in comparison to the emotional tension that she drives even to the last second of her death row. The moment when she cried out in her isolated room is extremely intense. She couldn't bear it not because she was afraid of her doomed death but because it was too quite, so came to finally find some rhythm from water pipes in the building. After watching her music video of All is Full of Love in class, I looked through some of her photos and am currently listening to her music. She, I think, doesn't have certain quali...

Norwegian expressionist painter. I loved his painting, Madonna, which was depicted in my classmate's B/W film, then paid much attention to his work mainly through art books. On the way to Spain in 2001(?), I had a stop over in Zurich and visited an art museum, which possesses the largest number of Munch's art works outside of Norway. Most of his pieces were big, I think. My visit to Chicago last month was so refreshing and a moment to catch up with things. Among others, visiting Art Institute for the special exhibition of Munch was blissful. He, who lost his sister and mother early on, lived in depression and his emotional condition, influenced by the turbulent period of time in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, was greatly reflected in his work. In his early career, even until the early 1890, he seemed to employ techniques of impressionists and his selection of color was rather bright. But, from the mid-1890, his brush took very strong printing power and the co...

While preparing the presentation next week, I stopped for a moment, defining a link between alternative media (AM) and participatory action research (PAR). The division erodes as both are based on participation for production. Alternative media, of course, is broader in definition, but AM and PAR seem to share the same paradigm—toward participatory democracy. It sounds very rosy. But in any case, people create something, which is quite exciting, and it is great that researchers begin to be aware of this dazzling experience everyone deserves enjoying. Skimming through an entry of PAR in Wikipedia, my eyes sojourn over a paragraph about Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals. The author mentions the ethos of PAR is connected to Gramsci because of his emphasis on the use of knowledge gained through lived experience. But this doesn’t seem correct, because he meant by “organic” that intellectuals are formed within a social group with possession of political directiveness as well as scie...

Thanks to Tony, who had a fancy telephone, this video was created. See you in summer! --Kay

Feb. 16th. Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Hoechsmann Feb. 19th. Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Mitchell When I said, "I am again humbled," Dr. Ghosh responded I should be and even later on. Dr. Ghosh is very professional in a gentle way. Dr. Mitchell is always encouraging and full of energy. I do not know well enough to say about Dr. Hoechsmann, but he seems supportive and modest. In particular, today's meeting was more productive and ideas became clearer. I will remain humbled. Dr. Ghosh urges me to define the advantage of using video other than other methodologies. I should make a connection to feminism methodology and be able to answer this question thoroughly. Start from demographic overview based on Statistics in 2006. Then, scan studies about Korean, then women. Then, look for newspaper or other sources. Contact two faculty members. Contact Korean local community. In April, based on the survey, write up a proposal (questions and rationals, methodology and research questions, 3-5 pages) Look ...

Laurent Cantet (2008). This claustrophobic classroom is full of tensions between a teacher and his students and among students. But they are only visible tensions. Other teachers come into play and the seemingly fair and prudent principal keeps invisible tension to the end of the film. There are neither evils nor angels. Every teacher tries to keep their feet on an acrobat string suspended several feet above a dangerously dormant war, which stems from a long history of political disfranchisement and colonial-minded purposeful alienation. A documentary-like taste of this film is not just coming from the fact that multiple cameras were used to shoot the classroom. None of the actors are actually professionals. Students' actions are so spontaneous that I tend to forget it was specially staged. So immersed in the film, I painfully read an uncompromising distance between François (the teacher) and his students. I believe he is rather a good teacher although not ideal. He has to endure a...

Dear Kay, In response to your 4th journal ... Those are good questions and I don't have an answer for you. You will have to decide. I know it's not easy to decide. Why don't you try putting your present topic on the backburner and writing through your self-chosen "exile" (if I can put it that way)? If you were to produce some more journal entries on this, what would you say? Valerie Walkerdine says that it is important to pay attention to niggling things. In her case, it was the tendency in the discourse to talk about social class (a la Raymond Williams) without talking about the lived experience of social class, in this case, lower social class. So, she found herself in situations of being in people's homes that resembled her own upbringing, but she couldn't say that because it wasn't admissible in the academic discourse at the time. It niggled at her and niggled at her until finally, she decided to acknowledge where she came from and who she was and ...

Teresa wrote whether the informal learning that I took based on my initiative has been a structured experience. By and large, I question myself whether informal learning in her meaning has been just additional to my formal learning if formal learning meant only learning from the classes that I registered for. Last semester I took only two classes and even one of those was Pro-seminar, which is not directly related to my study. The other class was of a seminar type, not a lecture. In the end, I wrote a final paper, which was supposed to be an application of the methodologies we had talked about in class. Using some of the learned methodologies, I was expected to conduct research on a topic. It was rather exciting in a sense, feeling like a scholar on my own way, and was a synergistic combination between formal and informal learning. But, did it become my structured experience?

Hesse. (1920; 1972 in English). James Wright (Trans). NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux This book I wish to possess, saturated with lovely loneliness and simple yet sharp meditation, is composed of Hesse's watercolor paintings, proses and poems. (On the left, Gogh's oil painting, The Old Tower in the Field ) He appreciates the joy of life allotted to him. The dream of death is only the dark smoke Under which the fires of life are burning. He looks for motherhood as he seeks God. Heart, how torn you are, How blessed to plow down blindly, To think nothing, to know nothing, Only to breathe, only to feel. He learns from trees, Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life it not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God Speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. ...

Herman Hesse (1932) Hesse's oriental mysticism and his perspicacious insight to human natures--their gifted talent for forgetting and their ever capricious soul--culminate in this novel divided into two parts. Meticulously interwoven plots brings this short piece to a concise unity although it was hard to grasp at the first glance. Probably its narrative style, built on the flow of mystical religious mind and subtle actions, makes the understanding the theme more difficult. I will have another time to read it over.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) 1927 in German / 1929 first translated in English My inexplicable affinity to Hesse reoccurred in a dread time and I grabbed Steppenwolf again--I failed to read some years ago. While reading the first half of the story, a crispy-sharp icy chill penetrated my skin because of its needle-like high precision in describing human nature and striking resemblance to my own. Harry, who describes himself as half a man and half a wolf, a savage animal, suffers from the cacophony of the two kinds in himself. He, helpless bourgeois, longs for the innocent indulgence in bourgeoisie life in his youth, simultaneously detesting its unbearable lightness and vanity. Besides humanities that Hesse wished to preserve, his abomination of war appears to lie beneath the entire story grounded from the author's desperate exhortation to the world for self-reflection beyond politics. Harry's life makes a sharp turn when he gets to know an mysterious woman and his dark time climax...

3700 McTavish. December 15, 2008

Hamish Hamilton Pub. (1946). Camus' first novel, L'étranger shares the same breath on absurdity with Reflection on the Guillotine , which appears twofold in this novel: the first is his murder and the second the background of his accusation. Meursault only murmurs at the court that he murdered the Arab because of the sun, which is not persuasive in every sense. But the mise-en-scene of the story, laid out on a nearly unilateral evolution of the stifling power of the sun, as if all happened in one day, gives much excuse for his unintentional crime. His mothers' mortuary, a bright and spotlessly clean room with whitewashed walls, was flooded with skylight. While the undertakers were working, 'the sky was already a blaze of light and the air stoking up rapidly.' That Sunday morning, when Meursault walks out, 'the glare of the morning sun hit me in the eyes like a clenched fist.' Then, the light became almost vertical and the flare from the water seared one...

Camus, A. (1957). In Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961). This research essay is worth a special note. As the title suggests, it is based on a historical analysis but nevertheless full of reflections and reasoning. He refuses purely sentimental confusion because it is made up of cowardice and eventually stands on the worst side. Every paragraph is written with his conviction. The supporting documents which described moments at the guillotine are as chilly as excoriating one's own. He argues that if the capital punishment is a regrettable necessity as its advocates say and an example in the effort of preventing another crime, the execution should be performed publicly and described vividly so that all others know. But the State hides it because such punishments paradoxically would blame the state for letting such crimes happen. Statistically those who faced capital punishment in fact had seen its execution in their life. So, criminals who commit such crimes are less likely to be...